Alan Kay's reading list - <AUTHOR> http://www.squeakland.org/resources/books/readingList.jsp <comment><USER2> This wasn't actually for my students, and dates back to the early 90s. A number of people at Anderson Consulting (now Accenture) asked for my "top ten" books. This is not possible for anyone who reads extensively, so I came out with that list as a bare start. I should mention that reading lots of "poor books" is also part of literacy: they help the understanding and appreciation of "good books" considerably.

<comment><USER3> I always wanted to ask you this: what's your opinion on Gregory Bateson's work on the intersection of anthropology, psychiatry, cybernetics and communication in general? Since this discussion is focusing on books, have you read "Steps to an Ecology of Mind"?

I hope it goes without saying: thank you very much for your contribution to the world, generally.

<comment><USER4> Another of many books I probably should have put on the list (but that's the problem with lists of "good books" in a world that has thousands of them). I knew Gregory slightly, and his daughter Mary Catherine more so. (And there are others from this circle that should be included: Gordon Pask, Heinz von Forester, etc.)

One way to think about this in the larger sense is that "an interesting person is one who is interesting whether you agree with them or not". This also goes for books. (This is the "it's about _perspectives_ , not about _relevance_ " point of view.)

It's worth it to try to understand what "interesting people" have thought -- it provides context for one's own thinking.

<comment><USER3> > It's worth it to try to understand what "interesting people" have thought -- > it provides context for one's own thinking.

This is eventually the main reason why I mentioned Bateson's work in particular (besides the depth and orthogonality of his ideas).

I've read Watzlawick's work on interaction and pragmatics of communication before I've read Bateson's. I found Watzlawick's ideas easier to grasp (at least, I'm under that illusion), clearly presented with e.g. axioms. Then I read Bateson's work, and got this strange feeling of dwelling around the same underlying concepts, but without a clear understanding of his main argument.

I've read "Steps to an Ecology of Mind" quite a few times (I still re-read some chapters every once in a while) and always felt that a) I'm reading new material; and b) I'm not _getting_ it all. Yet, I always get something new, and this is an extremely interesting insight on how my own perception changes over time.

Of course, this happens with other books and authors. Still, personally, I have a clear feeling that not to the same extent as it happens with Bateson's ideas. It's my own mirror, so to speak.

<comment><USER4> Well, Gregory missed some important ideas in that book (partly from his background I think, and partly from his personality). You might get some perspective from looking at his last book "Mind and Nature". And, in many ways, much more powerful looks at "mind" are Minsky's "Society of Mind" and "The Emotion Machine". There is also Kahneman's "Thinking: Fast and Slow" more recently ...

<comment><USER5> _The Vital Question: Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life_ by Nick Lane is not really about the mind, but it is about the things that lead up to the contemporary mind and is consistently fascinating, even for me who has no biology / biochemistry background. I learned about it from the Bill Gates blog: [https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/The-Vital- Question](https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/The-Vital-Question).

<comment><USER4> I don't want to ding this book, if only because the topic is well chosen and important. I was quite surprised that I didn't warm to it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Bookmarked this list the first time I saw it on HN seven years ago. I have been slowly working my way through it, with some personal curation, ever since.

Some of my favorites:

Conscientious Objections

Freedom and Culture

Visual Thinking

Notes on a Synthesis of Form

The Character of Physical Law

and anything Tufte

Here is the old post, with some good discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=664324](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=664324)

</comment><comment><USER7> Mindstorms by Papert transformed my understanding of how to program, and how to teach programming. The book discusses how children acquire mental models of computers and logical processes.

And it turns out that the book is growing even more relevant with the rapid growth of Lego Mindstorms -- which is a direct result Papert's projects and related MIT Media Lab projects.

What is most exciting, to me, is the direct links from the Mindstorms book to the rise of hobby micro-controllers such as the Arduino, BeagleBone, Raspberry Pi, and others, as well as the "Internet of Things" meme and similar kinds of home automation projects and home robotics projects.

<comment><USER8> Mindstorms is truly a transformational text. It's very sad that Papert's brain injury sustained in Hanoi resulted in him needing to use some of the same techniques that he developed in the text to aid in his personal rehabilitation and recovery.

<comment><USER9> I don't think it's necessarily a sad thing. It's of course a sad event for anyone to sustain a brain injury. But if he used his own techniques and they provably lead to recovery, it should be a moment of joy and triumph. His work was not wasted and he helped himself - what could be better than that?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I am a particular fan of the Debono books. I swear, debono is unparalled in clear writing. Here are video versions of the two debono books mentioned in Alan Kay's reading list just in case anyone's interested:

Lateral Thinking: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFFZ0XSfCRw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFFZ0XSfCRw)

Six Thinking Hats: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Mtc_CBTIeI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Mtc_CBTIeI)

<comment><USER11> "Six Thinking Hats" was the first book that I read in this area. To this day I like to use his methodology from time to time when I have to find a solution to a big problem that confuses me so much that I don't even know where to start. Even if you don't have a problem at hand applying it to a hypothetical problem is quite a fun mind game when you have some time to kill (for example on a long bus trip).

That said I probably read the book at the right time because it works best when you have a certain naivete and faith that you stumbled upon the ultimate silver bullet for problem solving.

Had I encountered the book just yet I'd probably have been more dismissive of it. "Oh yeah, here we go .. another guy who wants to sell you some self-help fluff disguised in a business context"

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Note that the only book specific to computer language on there is McCarthy's Lisp manual.

<comment><USER13> If you plan to get old, invest in fundamentals. They'll be with you long after any specific implementation is dead and buried.

<comment><USER14> > If you plan to get old, invest in fundamentals.

by that account, shouldn't we all be learning mathematics ?

<comment><USER15> Learn ecology, we are organisms that can't live without our ecosystem and we all need to be aware of what ecosystems can and can't do. Doesn't get more fundamental than that.

<comment><USER16> In that spirit: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fates_of_Nations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fates_of_Nations) (I pretty much wrote that Wikipedia page.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> So great to see Neil Postman and Marshal Mcluhan on the top, as well as Joseph Campbell and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in the middle

Essential reading for a world that usually promotes taking media for granted.

</comment><comment><USER18> This could do with a short summary of the book and why Alan Kay thought it was relevant, for each, on-page, before the link to Amazon.

<comment><USER4> It's not about "relevance" but about "perspectives"

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There seems to be a depth limit on replies: too bad.

Also, I wonder if there is a provision (perhaps in a "preferences" section I don't know about) to have an email sent when someone replies (this is a very limited format for an open-ended exchange ...)

<comment><USER19> > _There seems to be a depth limit on replies: too bad_

It's an old pg trick to put a speed bump on flamewars (edit: the 'reply' link does show up after a few minutes), but you can get around it by clicking the timestamp of the comment you want to reply to.

I've relaxed the depth limit a notch, too.

<comment><USER4> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It seems I've missed the boat on this discussion, but I wanted to say that I appreciate the context in which the list was created and the choices in that light. In other words, this list is a thoughtful attempt to educate people of a certain bent via "constrained breath" \-- not the greatest term, but the best one that comes to mind. I've been trying to put together a list in the same spirit for some time aimed at programmers, systems thinkers, etc. with varying degrees of success. The current list can be described as "books for programming that are not about programming" containing such gems as _How Buildings Learn_ , _Pattern Recognition_ , _Living System_ , _Wabi-Sabi: for Artists, Designers, Poets and Philosophers_ , and others.

I suspect Dr. kay would have a lot to say about (and perhaps add to) such a list.

</comment><comment><USER21> I've been making lists out of book recommendations from Reddit. Adding this list and all the other books on www.shelfjoy.com

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm surprised there is nothing by Montessori. Seems a natural given the works by Piaget and Vygotsky. The Absorbant Mind would be an obvious pick.

<comment><USER4> Yes, the first two or three books by Montessori would be on this list if I'd been comprehensive enough. I don't remember whether I listed Suzuki's "Nurtured By Love" book: another classic for those trying to think about learning, children, art, culture, environment, etc.

<comment><USER4> In checking, I see that there is a Montessori book listed, as well as the book by Suzuki ...

<comment><USER23> So there is. My mistake. Secret of Childhood is a good one.

Montessori anticipated the whole 'the brain exists to control movement' awakening that is happening in developmental cognitive neuroscience, and her work caused me to question the relevance of technology in an early learning environment.

This is a great book list. I was delighted to see De Bono there, who I'd forgotten about since I first discovered him years ago. May have to reread some of that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The inner game of tennis is an awesome quick read.

</comment><comment><USER25> That's a lot of books! I wish there were a top 5.

<comment><USER4> It's a bit like the problem of comparing great composers and great music -- for example, it doesn't really make sense to try to decide whether Bach was a greater composer than Beethoven or any other great composer. Thresholds are a little better: "above the line is 'great' ", etc. But then drawing the line is tough.

In this list I didn't include quite a number of books I think of as "great" \-- instead I put in readable books that I thought would help the target readers.

Just to pick _one_ as an example: I think Newton's "Principia" is a great book. It's not easy to read, and it would not have been a good choice for this group, but it is above any threshold I would draw.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Great list but I'm surprized about the De Bono books. Edward De Bono is a great story-teller, but there's little science in his work and while he describes many instances of creative thought, he never shows the underlying mechanisms with any rigor.

<comment><USER27> That's lines up with Kay perfectly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I love Kay and you should absolutely read any of his recommendations or at least examine them with earnest. That said, I struggle to remember anything he's created or written that's moved the needle (my needle). I'm honestly not hating and I have way too much respect for him to say anything on this list is not worthwhile. But, in my experience, Kay has been one of those brilliant uncles who's (written) work never seems to approach the peripheries of my (self-guided) computer science study (or main stream relevance?). Obviously I've heard of and studied him but if you asked me at a bar "madebylaw is alan kay still relevant in computer science?"

<comment><USER29> > I struggle to remember anything he's created or written that's moved the > needle

Well he helped created the first computer networked workstations, practically invented Object Oriented Programming, created the concepts of overlapping window management...

... I struggle to think of what needle your trying to move that wouldn't be moved by any of those.

<comment><USER30> Also, more recently, his work with the Squeak Smalltalk and Scratch communities, particularly regarding computer programming education for children, is certainly currently relevant. His is one of the finest minds I have yet experienced in person.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> It would be interesting to know what are his favorite books of the last 20 years

<comment><USER32> Which is a very polite way of pointing out how out of date it is ;-)

I think I read most of those books they were popular, but I'm not that much younger than he is. I'm not sure I'd recommend all of them now....

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> The site's not loading for me. Cached version: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:_vTAtT7...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:_vTAtT7dpeoJ:www.squeakland.org/resources/books/readingList.jsp+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca)

</comment><comment><USER27> Mindstorms, the quintessential Kay book in that list, links to the wrong amazon page, Ghost in the Machine, ironic.

</comment><comment><USER34> It's a good list, but might just be a bit too androcentric with only 5 women out of the ~90 persons listed, (including anthologies.) Counting: Hannah Arendt, Maria Montessori, Mary Midgley, Sylvia Scribner and Rebecca West.

<comment><USER35> I don't know about you, but I never check the gender of the author when picking up a book. Your comment suggest that Alan Kay deliberately discarded books written by women, and I find that hard to believe.

<comment><USER36> > I never check the gender of the author when picking up a book.

That's probably true, and that's good. However, that doesn't mean that the author's gender doesn't influence the work itself. You are not deliberately opting into skewing the data yourself, but you are still consuming a biased input set.

> Your comment suggest that Alan Kay deliberately discarded books written by > women, and I find that hard to believe.

I don't think that's the case. I think it's just the more value-free observation that "this set of data points is biased." It doesn't state _why_ it is, just that it is. That might be relevant to someone who expects the list to reflect a certain distribution of perspectives.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I thought hn prevented dupe link submissions. Im glad this slipped by since I missed the other ones. But how did it slip by in the first place?

</comment><comment><USER38> Do you read on paper, tablet, phone, or all of the above? What do you think about the respective merits of these?

<comment><USER4> I did a lot of work at PARC on the design of readable fonts, and a few years later on reading from a display (CRT) using a super-good eye tracker we had. This was prompted by "bad feelings" when trying to read from displays. The displays are better today, but I still have "bad feelings" (somewhat different) from reading from various kinds of displays, even including eInk ones. It's partly "movement" and partly memory, so I always print out to read when I can. (This is a disappointment to say the least.)

<comment><USER38> Thanks. I tried to go all digital a few years ago -- getting rid of nearly all my 1000+ paper books -- only to conclude I'm generally better off reading paper and nearly always better off reading important things on paper. This because paper has a higher barrier to entry (I think of it as "slow information"), because the cookie-cutter sizing of tablets and ereaders screws up sizing (of code in particular) and, frankly, because I get tired of looking at screens and struggle to resist context switching. That said, I like to have an electronic copy of everything for easy referencing and corpus work.

The subject of paper vs digital is of particular interest to me because I volunteer with www.savenypl.org, a group created to thwart the NYPL's efforts to gut the stacks at the 42nd Street Library and sell of two branch libraries (we succeeded, mostly). I am not as skeptical of keeping books off site as some of our members, but I think many libraries are misguided in their rush to remove paper books, for reasons of both reading efficacy and surveillance. I know many technologists share these concerns. Richard Stallman was kind enough to help a few years ago ([https://stallman.org/save-the- nypl.html](https://stallman.org/save-the-nypl.html)). Now it would be good to have additional technical people weigh in on the issue of digitization / paper book removal.

May I add you to the list of such people and / or keep you posted?

<comment><USER4> There's no question that electronic media as readable as paper can be done -- and, in a way, it is not too surprising that it hasn't (I don't think most technologists care). I am quite curious why the super-high-res screens don't work better for this (worth looking at).

The first commercial laser printers were 300dpi and the result was quite readable (the very first one that was invented -- by Gary Starkweather at Parc -- was 500pdi). I asked John Warnock why 300dpi worked better than I thought it would, and he said that it was the "real black" and excellent accuracy.

We have both at least that on "retina" type displays, so I'm guessing that there is still some refresh flicker that is causing some of the problems (if so, then that would revise long ago experiments that indicated most people would not be bothered by anything above 120p).

(But I think I feel that my eyes are doing extra saccades on laptop displays, and that the contrast ratios and res are not good enough with eInk.)

The experiments I did at Parc, cross connected with Tom Cornsweet's work at SRI, showed curves that swung both with contrast ratio, and "distance from real black".

Another thing that will help (for "Aldus" type personal books) will be the next round of flexible displays that will feel a little more conformal.

(Also, how could the Ipad and Eink tablet folks failed to have put the batteries on one side of a symmetric device so it could be held with the center of mass in the offhand?) This is really shockingly awful elementary human factors design. The next round of these will hopefully have a lower density/mass in any case.

<comment><USER39> I think a glossy screen in a well lit room will never achieve an acceptable black. I am writing this on a macbok in a room with bay windows and I can see my reflection on the _white_ parts of the screen.

<comment><USER4> Screens used to have a "quarter wave plate" that would knock down a lot of the reflections -- I'm not sure why the glossy screens came back (more light out? cheaper?).

I have an older MacAir that does not have a highly reflective screen. The black is pretty good.

My feeling is that my eyes are jumping a bit with it, and for this (or some other) reason, I also have a distinct "I'm not remembering as well" underlying feeling. (This could be an illusion, or it could be harking back to long ago when I was trying to learn how to remember more of what I was reading ...)

<comment><USER39> Glossy displays definitely appear to have more vibrant color in the average big-box store with very diffuse lighting. They are also somewhat better if you can sit so that all of the specular reflections from bright lights will be directed away from you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> V-2 It's an interesting selection overall, however I couldn't help but notice that the "Politics & Economy" section looks like neither politics nor economy have ever existed anywhere but in the US : )

<comment><USER40> Have you read Drucker?

<comment> V-2 Drucker's books are listed under "Technology & Media", not "Politics & Economy", so I can't see how it relates to my comment

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I'm disappointed not to see Aristotle. On the other hand not totally surprised, either.

<comment><USER42> Kay is a huge admirer of Socrates. When I interviewed Kay in 2012, he even managed to bring Socrates into the conversation and then discourse on his worthiness in the context of various religions[1]: "You can't go to heaven unless you're baptized. If anyone deserves to go to heaven, it's Socrates, so this is a huge problem."

While the link below goes to the page mentioning Socrates, I highly recommend the entire interview. Kay was in truly excellent form.

[1] [http://www.drdobbs.com/architecture-and-design/interview- wit...](http://www.drdobbs.com/architecture-and-design/interview-with-alan- kay/240003442?pgno=4)

<comment><USER43> Dante has a solution for this: There is a place in the upper section of hell with no punishment or torment, reserved for "just heathens" like Socrates. So technically he did not go to heaven since he is denied the closeness to God, but arguably this is an even nicer afterlife, since he can continue thinking and questioning things together with other great minds.

<comment><USER4> And consider that the Mormons _did_ get Socrates into heaven (via proxy baptism!)

<comment><USER44> Exmormon here, to get into VIP Heaven (highest kingdom in heaven) he also needs temple endowment and temple sealing done by proxy too (which they've probably done). Don't tell me you converted to mormonism because of this

<comment><USER4> Nope (I just read a lot)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Just published a barebone Node schema package - <AUTHOR> https://www.npmjs.com/package/machiavelli <comment><USER2> Looking good, would be excellent to have datatypes for Sequelize ([http://docs.sequelizejs.com/en/latest/api/datatypes/](http://docs.sequelizejs.com/en/latest/api/datatypes/)). Looking for contribs?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep! I am looking for contributors. I am not familiar with Sequelize. It says it is an ORM so shouldn't it already have a Schema?</comment></comment>


N.Y. Set to Criminalize Much "Verbal" "Abuse" of Under-18-Year-Olds Online - <AUTHOR> https://reason.com/volokh/2018/06/09/ny-set-to-criminalize-much-verbal-abuse <comment><USER2> > "knowingly engage[] in a repeated course of cyberbullying of a minor."

How does it work for normal bullying? Why do we need a special law for "when things happen online"?

It seems that the online world needs separate laws from the non-digital one. This is nonsense.

Cyberbullying is just bullying on the internet. Do we have laws for phone- bullying, letter-bullying...?

Discriminations, bullying and other forms of abuse are a social problem. We need to solve the problem, not just try to hide it out of the public view that is the Internet.

<comment><USER3> > Do we have laws for phone-bullying, letter-bullying

Yes, the phone system and the postal system have their own set of laws.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've seen exactly what this leads to in the UK, so I can only hope to hell our 1st amendment would prevent similar oppressive laws from standing in the States.

Too bad for whoever has to foot the bill for challenging this dumpster fire though.

<comment><USER5> Such as?

<comment><USER4> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16571595](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16571595)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't think it's the State's job to shun individuals for poor social behavior. If school administrators do not have the authority to kick bullies out of school based on poor patterns of behavior, do they really need to escalate to criminal offenses that put them in prison? Maybe we should keep shunning criteria off the books when possible and let society establish its norms like actual human beings.

<comment><USER7> Citation needed for the idea that there was a golden age wherein healthy norms were formed and communicated, without at least the implication of backing by an authoritative enforcer. In what I know about such golden age references, one or more was true:

\- deviants operated unacknowledged in shadows, \- society operated under the idea that there was an acceptable class of victims, \- an in group either openly or tacitly wielded the authority of the state

So I don't find the "why not let people solve their own problems at a societal scale" as being a particularly well-informed critique.

<comment><USER6> >Citation needed for the idea that there was a golden age

I didn't mean to imply this. There never was and will never be a golden age of people interacting, whether state or socially mandated.

I do think that person-to-person and community-to-community scales better than state-sized laws in terms of choosing who gets rewarded and punished. The problem is that laws are hard to write that capture emerging social norms. The "no child left behind" act may have kept too many people in school (bullies that these new laws are targeting). Giving teachers authority to throw out trouble-makers seems like a better solution (for all parties) than outright criminalizing deviant behavior.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wonder why it explicitly calls out "by threats, intimidation or abuse, including cyberbullying" as the methods for causing physical or emotional harm. In the cheating boyfriend example, why wouldn't the boyfriend be considered a criminal for clearly creating emotional harm to the girl?

</comment><comment><USER9> It seems like a stretch to think the N.Y. Senate is really stupid enough to think this is good legislation. Which makes me wonder if some of the unfortunate side effects are actually seen as a feature rather than a bug.

</comment><comment><USER10> Why is "abuse" in scare quotes?

<comment><USER11> Probably because

> A 16-year-old girl is cheated on by her 17-year-old boyfriend. She's angry, > so she sends several e-mails to her girlfriends disclosing this and calling > him names. One of them forwards it to someone who then forwards it to the > ex-boyfriend. The boyfriend feels humiliated. That's a crime on the girls' > part: She engaged in "repeated" "verbal" "abuse" using "any form of > electronic communication," and this "would reasonably be expected to cause > ... emotional harm" to the ex-boyfriend, and makes him feel like school is a > "hostile environment" (since everyone now knows his misconduct). The girl is > a criminal.

Why is the girl the criminal and not the forwarders?

<comment><USER12> We don't actually know that the girl would be found to be a criminal. This is a very carefully constructed test case by the author, designed to attack the law.

<comment><USER13> >This is a very carefully constructed test case by the author, designed to attack the law.

As it should be in the context of discussing laws. If legislation can't stand up to the light level of scrutiny that comes from spit-balling hypotheticals to test for unintended consequences, then the law is poorly drafted.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Trendsmap - Real time local Twitter trends - <AUTHOR> http://www.trendsmap.com/ <comment><USER2> While this is interesting from a data visualisation perspective it just shows further that the things people twitter about are completely worthless.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. But I also think that what people tweet about is worthless mostly when there is nothing to tweet about. :-) This (trendsmap) might make a lot more sense in crisis situations. We might be able to see relevant tweets coming out from affected areas. Just a thought.</comment></comment>


Op amp on the Moon: Reverse-engineering a hybrid op amp module - <AUTHOR> http://www.righto.com/2019/02/op-amp-on-moon-reverse-engineering.html <comment><USER2> "Amelco" seems too much like an initialism of "American Electronics Company" to be a coincidence. Although I can find a lot of old data about Philbrick (e.g. www.philbrickarchive.org ), Amelco seems more elusive and the only reference to any sort of catalog from them I could find is [https://www.abebooks.com/first-edition/Amelco-Data-Book- Volu...](https://www.abebooks.com/first-edition/Amelco-Data-Book- Volume-1-Semiconductor/11143055573/bd)

<comment><USER3> The book "History of Semiconductor Engineering" has about 8 pages on Amelco if you want more information. The summary is "Although many do not remember Amelco's accomplishments today, their achievements are definitely a significant part of the semiconductor saga."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting</comment>


Why Start-Ups Must Pay Attention To What's Behind The Curtain - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2010/04/24/how-a-start-up-grew-by-paying-attention-to-whats-behind-the-curtain/

<comment><USER2> I love this...its so true...very important to get feedback on something very early. No need to have a full product roadmap, just get it out there.

<comment><USER3> I agree fundamentally with a lean startup approach. I think the only thing to be careful of is shortchanging yourself. I think there has to be enough put out to test and get feedback on. It will be different for every project. Some can be built quicky, while others take more time. The trick is just to identify what are the core components that make the product. That's another advantage of a lean mentality, it forces you to focus on what's important and that can help the product evolve more potently I believe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> a question that is relevant but not touched upon by this article is how much to weigh feedback into the decisions you make about your startup.

while feedback is an absolutely necessary part of developing your idea, its also important that you have a clear vision of what you're trying to accomplish and not let feedback lead you astray from that vision.

disclaimer, i'm coming from an interactive design background, so may be a little more sensitive to crappy feedback that muddles my beautiful designs :)</comment>


How LeBron James' Tattoos Could Affect Baseball - <AUTHOR> https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/how-lebron-james-tattoos-could-affect-baseball/ <comment><AUTHOR> > LeBron has some awesome ink. It's a part of his brand, and so back in 2015, > those tattoos were included in the computerized depiction of LeBron created > for the NBA2K video game. [...] Ordinarily that wouldn't have been a big > deal, except that it led to a lawsuit being filed by Solid Oak Sketches, > LLC, against the video-game makers, for copyright infringement.

<comment><USER2> So they're supposed to put LeBron in the game with no tattoos or fake different tattoos? If someone had a special haircut, could the hair stylist copyright the haircut? If someone had a special makeup job, could the makeup artist copyright the makeup job? I don't see how this makes sense. I can understand a design being copyrighted, but once it's applied and inseparable from a person, the copyright can still apply?

edit: So nobody would be able to take photos to make posters, coffee mugs, etc, if the subject has any copyrighted design implemented on their body, unless they pay a licensing fee to the copyright holder?

<comment><USER3> > If someone had a special haircut, could the hair stylist copyright the > haircut?

I imagine this would hinge on whether hair can be considered a tangible medium.

> If someone had a special makeup job, could the makeup artist copyright the > makeup job?

I see this as the same issue as tattoos - even though makeup is generally considered a temporary thing, that doesn't minimise the copyright applicability - assuming that skin is considered a tangible medium.

Similar body issues: Piercings, studs, etc where the overall arrangement and application may be considered a unique work of art.

I'd be interested to know if the absence/removal of something would constitute a work of art being recorded in a tangible medium - i.e a particularly unique style of hair plucking (eyebrows, say).

<comment><USER4> It's also important to note that fashion design is not eligible for copyright protection, despite the fact that a logo placed on a shirt is eligible. Would a hairstyle or makeup be considered as a product design, or a logo design?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Seems like a tattoo would fall under commissioned artwork, which seems like the rights should belong to the commissioner, not the artist. Unlike a canvas, you don't just suddenly wake up with tattoos, unless there's much alcohol involved.

</comment><comment><USER6> The most interesting part to me here is the fair use aspect. I don't know much law, but this page [0] seems to suggest that fair use is actually really flexible and maybe hard to predict. It will be really interesting to see what happens here.

[0] [https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/four- factors/...](https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/four- factors/#the_nature_of_the_copyrighted_work)

</comment><comment><USER7> This will have 0 effect on baseball, unless you count slightly changing the way baseball video games are produced.

It's still a crazy of copyright maximalism at work. It's hard to get worked up about with so many more pressing issues up for grabs today, but even copyright maximalism is a symptom of a larger problem of the neoliberal world order having an unstoppable drive to monetize and marketize everything. This is new, unsettled law because tattoos were always a fringe weirdo outsider thing that would never ever land in a court. Now that tattoos have become mainstream and rich people (LeBron James in this case) have them, we have to fit it into this crazy framework we've invented to let multinational corporations make money on mouse cartoons. If we don't, there may be _dire consequences_ like setting a precedent that not every cultural practice can be owned and charged for, and that property rights are possibly not the most fundamental rights in a free society.

</comment><comment><USER8> My plan is that you settle and then pay their licensing fee. At which point you've got the right to show the tattoos so you use that right. Create a new basketball player called LeBron Jame's Solid Oak Sketches LLC tattoos. It's just LeBron Jame's tattoos on an invisible person. It's the worst player and gets constant heckling from the audience.

LeBron doesn't seem to like where the whole thing is going, so that means he's also likely to play ball if you bring him some more interesting ideas. Create a LeBron James with a different set of tattoos by a tattoo artist you explicitly hire for this purpose. Advertise this artist a _lot_. Make sure the new artist has the staff to be able to completely consume all of Solid Oak Sketches LLC business.

Make a campaign mode where LeBron James has all of his tattoos stolen by a wizard. You have to win a bunch of games to get them back, but they come back slightly altered such that they are no longer legally Solid Oak Sketches LLC IP.</comment>


I Quit New York - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/20/style/quit-new-york.html <comment><USER2> Loooooved Costa Rica when I was there Mid December. Spent 9 days there and could have spend 9 more. This story brings back good memories. Good read, thanks!</comment>


Ask HN: Why don't more web projects start with a JVM stack? - <AUTHOR> There seems to be a real advantage to using the JVM. It has practical-to-use, interoperable implementations of a wide variety of programming languages: from statically typed OO and OO/FP languages (Java, Kotlin, Ceylon, Scala, OCaml-Java) to Lisps (Clojure, ABCL, Kawa) to GIL-less ports of popular scripting languages (JRuby, Jython). You can call Java from a slower language like JRuby for the performance-critical bits instead of having to either write an interpreter extension in C or bite the microservice bullet. Deployment is simple. There is a lot of high-quality open source libraries. The price for this, slower application startup, greater memory usage and, in JRuby's case, a degree of incompatibility with the reference implementation, seems worth paying.<p>Still, I don't see a great number of startups or side projects that get featured on HN using the JVM from the get-go. What are the technical and the nontechnical reasons behind this? <comment><USER2> 1\. There was a history of heavy-weight, overly verbose frameworks. The early frameworks were over-engineered and hard to use. Lightweight frameworks in dynamic languages (Rails, django) thus took off when you they showed how you could write a blog app in fifteen minutes using only a few dozen lines of code.

2\. Using non-Java JVM languages seems to always create as many problems as it solves, in my experience. First, you do not get access to any libraries with C-bindings. So as your project gets going, the probability increases that some library you want to include won't work. Also, there are all sorts of micro- frictions. Debugging support not quite working. Types not matching between Java numbers and python numbers when doing comparisons. Etc. It all adds up. If you use Kotlin, then a lot of code samples you find on stackoverflow will have to be manually converted.

3\. If you go pure Java, the type system can be a pain in the neck when you are doing rapid development. Something as simple as getting a row out of the database with date field, publishing it as JSON, then getting posted back an updated version from JSON, requires a bunch of conversions and annotations to make the types all get matched correctly. Writing any sort of time-saving meta code requires a really strong knowledge of how generics, annotations, and reflection works, or else you will be beating your head against the wall.

4\. Restart times are longer, and there is no REPL, so rapid iteration is a little slower.

5\. I still don't think there is a web framework that is as easy to use as Rails/Django. I don't think this is the fault of the language though, and I have something in the works myself on this front...

<comment><USER3> Some counterpoints:

2\. You have access to troves of Java libraries from most JVM languages.

3\. Again, not all JVM languages suffer from this.

4\. Some JVM languages have a REPL. JRuby and Scala for example.

5\. You can use Ruby on Rails out of the box with JRuby and Torquebox. A couple of gemfile changes and you're good to go.

<comment><USER4> I believe Django also works under Jython

<comment><USER5> Last I used it it had a memory-leak issue that persisted for quite a while. By the time the bug was fixed, I'd gone off it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As much as most nerds would like to believe otherwise, people working with technology are not that different from other industries.

So most of us are subject to fashions and trends. And Java (the platform) is out of fashion* . Which is a pity. I've always disliked Java-the-Language, but kind of hoped some other languages would get first-class status there. By the time that those languages started showing up, I was already deep into Python, which has a flawed VM but a rich ecosystem and multiplatform.

* One of the biggest tells about JVM being seen as a "outdated" platform is that Javascript already had for a long time a JS implementation (Rhino) and it never got traction. It took node.js to come up and suddenly it became popular.

<comment><USER7> I am not a Java programmer, but I thought the platform was quite trendy in the form of Scala or Clojure.

<comment><USER8> Yep. Scala and Clojure brought life back to the JVM, being JVM-friendly dialects of Haskell and Lisp respectively. If it weren't for them, the JVM would already be sinking under the oppressive weight of Java and Groovy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Among my peers, everybody steers clear of Java and the JVM because of Oracle. We're not lawyers, we're engineers. We don't really quite understand what would happen if we make it big with Oracle.

Having that tumor attached to Java and the JVM taints it for everybody I know.

<comment><USER10> If Oracle, then why MySQL is so popular in web development?

<comment><USER4> The obvious answer is that Oracle didn't always own MySQL. The fact that they own them now is a good enough reason to stay away on a new project but maybe not a good enough reason to port.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Deployment is simple."

Not sure what to say. This is highly subjective and irrational anyway. And sad, hence.

Having spent some years in college programming in Java around 2000~2004, I was amazed by the then patterns-obsessed ludicrous verbosity of Java projects. Programming for the sake of writing so much text to accomplish so little.

Switched to Perl & PHP, which were, for Web-based projects we had, much more approachable and efficient (although somewhat ugly). Hopefully, Python & Ruby were growing too. And alternatives to XML happened too, thank God.

In the Web development sphere I worked in, Java projects always have felt to me like too... enterprise, under-specified, freezed, too much developer- focused, not enough thought out, although advertised as "the" technology of choice - so it was deceiving.

Whereas teams working with PHP (!) or Ruby felt like much more concerned about usability and efficiency, globally and were delivering better and faster. Perhaps because those teams were composed of people grasping the whole product stack (hosting, db, code, ui) at the same time, because the tools they had enabled them better to do so? Not sure.

Scala & Clojure look nice. Have to find a use case for these in my daily projects.

<comment><USER4> "I was amazed by the then patterns-obsessed ludicrous verbosity of Java projects. Programming for the sake of writing so much text to accomplish so little."

Tell me you've seen this:

[https://github.com/EnterpriseQualityCoding/FizzBuzzEnterpris...](https://github.com/EnterpriseQualityCoding/FizzBuzzEnterpriseEdition)

<comment><USER12> Thanks for the link. That made my day. =)

Here's a more realistic comparison between classic Java OOP design vs the more data-oriented approach to design encouraged in functional languages like Clojure for a simple board game:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tb823aqgX_0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tb823aqgX_0)

TL;DW:

The classic OOP design of the board game ended up with 22 classes, 11 interfaces, 1 enum in total, with 271 lines of pure skeleton code with no implementation of any game logic whatsoever. The class diagram can be seen here for a better sense of the complexity involved: [https://youtu.be/Tb823aqgX_0?t=688](https://youtu.be/Tb823aqgX_0?t=688)

The data-oriented design had 31 functions, longest of which is 7 lines, with a grand total of 144 lines of code that implements the entirety of the game logic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Java (the language and the platform) is my #1 choice for almost everything I do.

I can see why people wouldn't choose it though... for better or for worse.

There are not a lot of technical reasons, except perhaps than in "the cloud" using more RAM in a VM has a not insignificant cost, and Java-ish applications tend to have significant memory overhead.

Most of the downsides seem non-technical - perhaps mostly than it is just not "the new hotness". Also, in the 2000's Java went through the wringer of being used everywhere in "enterprise", and admittedly there were some ugly growing pains where you ended up writing XML configuration files that could be longer than your actual source code (Spring Framework and Hibernate were serious offenders, and "everyone" used those). During that time RoR started to become popular and provided a more pleasant alternative... then some of the Ruby community started writing hit pieces about the JVM platform which did a lot of damage to Java's "coolness" from which I don't think it ever really recovered.

Fast forward to today, and Java/JVM is battle tested and actually much easier and pleasant to use, but compared to "the new hotness" it is quite mature... and like grandparents, even though there is a lot of wisdom baked in there, it is not something that the "cool kids" want to hang out with.

</comment><comment><USER14> There is a non-obvious barrier to entry when it comes to the JVM, and that is learning the tools to performance tune a JVM in a production environment.

To many people this is somewhat akin to black magic. CMS, G1, PermGen, Xmx, NewRatio... it takes time to get to grips with even the rudiments of the JVM, and many places simply do not have the expertise.

Also, it takes time to set up a JVM stack. You can have a rudimentary rails app running in a few minutes; it took me several hours to get a lightweight spark / mysql PoC up and running.

Java is performant, but it falls down in terms of RAD when contrasted against languages like Go and Ruby and against frameworks like Elixir or Rails.

<comment><USER15> Java8 has removed permgen, which was the only parameter that was essential as it put a hard cap on the size of the app you can build. With that gone, the JVM running with defaults will run laps around any scripting language, and any additional tuning is just more cake.

A modern rails setup with system/user level isolation usually requires homebrew and rvm or similar which is quite involving. Compare that with install java, hit new play app in IDE (or download template) and just run, and I'd say Java has a pretty good recipe for productivity. Deployment? Just copy a fat jar created automatucally by the build system and java -jar it, no virtualenvs in sight.

So would I pick Java for a business? I don't know - I personally enjoy programming in Python way more than Java and would probably go with it, eventually regretting it...

<comment><USER14> I've been playing a bit with G1 and I'm still not 100% convinced that it's better than CMS. That said, it is nice to finally be rid of PermGen etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think people should just use what they're comfortable with and what is the best fit for the problem.

My perspective to web development isn't public websites, but web servers running on embedded devices and/or workstations.

My issue is that JVM forces me to marry it. I can never make a C-ABI library with it. However I need to run same code also in places where JVM is not available or an option, that limits JVM's usefulness to me.

Other issues I have is it's much harder (and often impossible) to extract maximum performance out of JVM. It's true JVM is as fast as _naive_ C/C++ code and much safer too. There are things you can do to slightly improve performance, but it often means the code is far from idiomatic Java (or whatever language it is that compiles to bytecode).

I like how JVM land can dynamically optimize on the fly according to runtime information. How it can inline at runtime across different .jar "libraries".

But in C-ABI land I can ensure memory locality of reference, directly map objects to memory mapped file, and use SIMD and other processor features for maximal effect. I can deal with multi-socket NUMA issues and allocate CPU local memory. There are cases where SIMD gives 10-40x boost (like sorting code) and a ton of cases where you get 2-10x gain.

I can even compile C/C++ code into pretty fast Javascript that runs in a web browser! Sure there's GWT, but it doesn't come near when it comes to end result performance. In fact, with some care, the same C/C++ code can run on practically any platform. Windows, OS X, Linux, Android, that 8-bit microcontroller, web, DSP, GPU -- you name it.

I do hate the days when some piece of code poops all over stack and heap and all you have is a corrupted core dump to work with.

Of course I can use JNI, but then I have two problems.

JVM banana is tasty, but the gorilla and jungle comes with it.

Rust apple looks promising and so far it seems like I get only the apple I need. On top of that it looks like in addition to memory safety, I'm also getting compile time concurrency guarantees. That's something JVM/Java never gave me.

If one day Rust could provide me dynamic runtime optimization features, that might be all I'll need.

</comment><comment><USER17> 1\. Oracle.

2\. "Better the devil you know". A lot of people don't trust JIT and especially GC to do their jobs well. Seeing the plethora of alternatives and options that have come along over the years doesn't help. Those things might be awesome by now, they might solve way more problems than they create, but too late. A lot of people have already taken a look and decided to stick with what they know.

3\. Oracle.

4\. Deployment headaches. Forget developers for a moment. Consider users. The JVM is no trivial thing resource-wise, even compared to other VMs. A lot of users don't want to add that much bloat, plus a whole parallel set of libraries installed "through the back door" instead of via the system package manager, then solve all of the tuning/sizing and dependency problems, to run one app. Developers who care about their users listen to this feedback.

5\. Oracle. I know it seems like I'm making a joke here, but that pernicious influence a _serious_ negative for a lot of developers and users.

<comment><USER18> > A lot of people don't trust JIT and especially GC to do their jobs well.

Practically all major languages other than C or C++ rely on GC. That point makes no sense. The JVM is used in so many critical infrastructure projects (let alone web apps like OP was referring to), and so the JIT point is also incorrect.

<comment><USER17> Point's waaaaaay over there, dude. This isn't about what _is_ or should be. It's about what people _perceive_ and how that affects their decisions. People who've been programming twice as long as the JVM has existed might still have a few funny ideas about it.

<comment><USER18> Fair enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm going to say something that'll probably be controversial, but screw it.

I think it's a subtle manifestation of ageism in startup culture. From my experience, most Java developers started with the language, community, and ecosystem when it was young, vibrant, and new. Those programmers (like me) are now in their 40s. A lot of them now work in beige cubicles for larger, more family-friendly firms (many by choice, so perhaps "ageism" is unfair). Early in your career, you see opportunity in new ecosystems. You see other people like you taking risks and experimenting with shiny new stuff and all the hype around it (hey look, now I'm the one being ageist!). The more mature you get, the more fads come and go, and some of us are a lot more cynical about whatever johnny-come-lately is being blogged about.

Rails, Django, even PHP, and newer technologies like Elixir and Golang - they're all new and fun. Younger people have the time, risk tolerance, and predilection to hype for the latest fads. There are opportunities to "make your mark" as an expert by contributing to FOSS projects and writing the next Rails in the next new language.

And startups like young people. Google Silicon Valley Ageism. Read pg's tweets ([https://mobile.twitter.com/paulg/status/655490006216146944](https://mobile.twitter.com/paulg/status/655490006216146944)). And young people like startups - they still see glory in working 60 hour weeks and sleeping at their desks.

I recognize that there are obviously lots of exceptions to all of this, and I'm probably being a bit dangerous speaking in generalities with my personal experience.

So tying back to the original question: Java and .Net were hip in the 90s and early 00s. In those eras, the people who worked with those exciting new architectures were the people in their twenties in those eras. They're older now, and startups tend to attract younger employees (call it ageism or call it "startups aren't attractive to older people." It happens). You don't see a lot of twentysomethings looking at the JVM and thinking there's a lot of opportunity there to make their mark as an expert. It's not the latest fad to be posted on Hacker News every other day. You don't see posts titled "A ___, but written in Kotlin"on what is (ostensibly) a site about startups. You see a lot of "A ___, but written in Go."

Having said that, I'm a forty-something Rails dev who's learning Elixir as we speak. So perhaps I have no idea what I'm talking about. ^_^

<comment><USER17> > You don't see a lot of twentysomethings ... thinking there's a lot of > opportunity there to make their mark

This is a too-common syndrome, and not just with respect to the JVM. Some people are genuinely in love with anything new. Some people just get bored easily. Those might not be the best motivations, but they're not the worst. The worst is the people who jump all over a new language or technology because they know peers are unfamiliar with it. They're insecure. They're not confident in their ability to master the standards and best practices that are already established for an older technology, so they try to get in first on a new technology where those things haven't evolved yet. No rules to violate. Then their arrogance as kings of the new hill, combined with their obvious cluelessness about the broader context, puts everyone off what might have been a true advance in the state of the art. That's the worst.

This is way more common than you'd think. There's a guy on my project, who works around the edges in Go because he can't handle the C that most of the code is written in. I've felt tempted to do similar things myself, writing some bit of code in Lua or something just so others won't be able to review what I've done and say it's wrong. I resisted. Too many don't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> > Java, Kotlin, Ceylon, Scala, OCaml-Java

Other than java, none of those languages are widely used. It seems business have an adversity to languages that are not "popular". So however much I'd like to write in Scala, our customers are not going to approve that.

> JRuby, Jython

Again, fringe languages. Python and ruby are great because of the large amount of packages available. Are those gonna run on Jython or jruby? It's hard to find out, so writing a project in Jruby or jython is a huge risk for me as a developer. ("Sorry, sqlalchemy contains C code").

> Deployment is simple

Hardly. Java is almost an OS in itself. It basically reinvents _everything_. Scheduling, memory management, logging, monitoring, init systems, etc. I've found that java apps require constant fiddling with settings. Other languages... just run.

> There is a lot of high-quality open source libraries.

True, but that's just as true for many other languages.

> greater memory usage

The JVM doesn't actually use up all that much more memory than, say, a Python program. Basic "hello world" in Python running on Cherrypy already takes up 800mb. The bigger problem is the JVM's rather static memory allocation.

> What are the technical and the nontechnical reasons behind this?

A little background: my experience with Java / the JVM is purely from a systems adminstration point of view. I don't develop in Java or for the JVM.

The reason for me is the obfuscated nature of java projects. It's all very... enterprisey. Hundreds of XML configuration files, toggles switches and knobs to tweak everywhere. I strongly believe in KISS, and Java/JVM is about as far away from KISS as you can get. I'm pretty sure it's great if you're following old-school waterfall "design upfront, then implement" projects like many big companies do (which I don't think is wrong at all). But when it comes to bootstrapping a project: no thanks.

<comment><USER21> Not really sure about the JVM's tuned memory usage but for web applications, you likely won't come near 800MB with Python.

For example a Flask project that I worked on had about 30 top level packages, and the entire web server used 55MB of RAM running with 1 gunicorn worker.

<comment><USER20> It's Cherrypy that sucks up memory like there's no tomorrow. Not sure why. Thing is, you can run the JVM on a lot less than the default settings. JVM isn't nearly as memory hungry as people think. It's just all the enterprise crap you get with frameworks such as jboss makes it bloated. But the same thing is true for Python. Try running OpenERP on anything less than 10gb.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> One of the reasons I think the standard Java project became too complex.

Java + Tomcat is simple, lightweight, powerful and fast.

When Java + Maven + Spring + Hibernate + JUnit + Jenkins became the default, it really became much harder to learn, slower to do anything and generally frustrating.

<comment><USER23> This.

Java is an excellent battle ready language that stable components in a business can be ported into with excellent test coverage and the power of all the mature libraries and tools.

However in a startup where maybe the end goal isn't completely defined yet; there is prototyping code to see if it will eventually get used and plenty of LoC being thrown away, wrestling with added libraries and even the compile & deploy time of Spring + Tomcat can really slow development and increase complexity breeding frustration.

<comment><USER5> Just my recollections of java dev from about 2yrs ago...

Maven was complex, with too many 'concepts' for a build system. It was a revelation when I discovered dependency download and jar creation through apache ivy. Did Gradle take off?

Tomcat in turn had problems too, I recall JBoss was a little more robust, but also complex.

I also found hibernate/spring to be confounded by differences between versions - the XML config (of which there was a lot) tended to change in format quite a bit, and there was an added complexity in figuring out how to get code, and xml, or even code-from-xml to behave intuitively. It felt like a massive ORM, written in XML and annotated java...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Why would someone prefer Node.JS to JVM stack for side projects?

Technical - I like Node's single-threaded, non-blocking model. It is enforced at the platform level, so that libraries from third-party companies are forced to adhere to it (single threaded AWS JS client library vs thread-pooling AWS libraries in JVM)

Non-technical - Java and C# is still lingua franca in most big companies in the industry. If you were to do side projects on your own, might as well pick something that's not part of your routine life, just to get some fresh new perspective.

</comment><comment><USER25> Setting aside the effects of hype, hipness and herd -iness..

Are you asking about the language or the platform ??

The usual argument for node vs java (for example) is that node has many small libraries (really code sniplets) which are instantly usable. So a lower activation energy!

As far as platform, the technical merits of a JVM are so much down the road so as to be completely meaning less at the critical early stages.

</comment><comment><USER26> 1\. I don't consider Java stack as the most agile stack. 2\. I think companies which use java are not that friendly with the open-source paradigm. Then, java community is not as huge as ruby, python, js communities. 3\. There isn't a powerful framework in constant evolution and supported by thousands of people.

<comment><USER27> All of your points are off:

1\. Java is not "a stack". It's a platform with multiple JVM, even more languages and numerous frameworks/languages. There are a lot of agile Java stacks out there.

2\. Java is very strong in open-source, including companies that contribute to it: Redhat (JBoss), Spring Source, Apache ([https://projects.apache.org/](https://projects.apache.org/)), IBM ([http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/find/projects/](http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/find/projects/)). Java is #2 OSS language on GitHub ([http://githut.info/](http://githut.info/)).

About Java community not being as huge as Ruby, Python, JS: [http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/](http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/)

3\. Just browse links above to see thousands of Java projects that are constantly being developed by thousands of contributors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> As far as I can tell, Clojure is pretty seriously popular. Before Clojure, and before Java 8, I wasn't attracted to the JVM very much at all, because I didn't enjoy writing Java code, I am seriously allergic to startup times, and I like my tools to fit in nicely in a GNU/Linux environment. I'm not a huge Clojure fan either, but I don't mind working with it. On a subconscious level I feel like Java is controlled by corporate leviathans that kind of terrify me, but I don't know how true this is.

</comment><comment><USER29> There are lots of good startups with scala/play framework as their stack

</comment><comment><USER30> It was very popular in the late 90s and early 2000s. A lot of stuff was built on Tomcat/JSP/JBoss foundations, and this drove the expansion of Apache Java projects. But time to market is everything, hence the rise of Ruby on Rails & Django 10 years ago.

</comment><comment><USER31> I am also a fan of the JVM. That's why I made my full stack framework JVM based:

[https://github.com/zubairq/AppShare](https://github.com/zubairq/AppShare)

</comment><comment><USER32> I am a fan of the JVM.

One definite problem I see is that (i) the Oracle JVM works better than Open JDK if you are doing anything demanding, and (ii) the Oracle JVM installer wants manual confirmation that you accept the license when you install it. (There is an answer for (ii) but that is all I will say about it.)

I think Java might be a harder platform to pick up than some other platforms. I have been programming in Java since Java was in beta, but today you need to know about Maven, probably Spring and also you need to have an IDE that provides more solutions than problems.

<comment><USER33> If I recall correctly, there is a environment variable you can set that implies you agree to it and the installer will not ask for manual confirmation.

<comment><USER34> The issue with accepting Oracle's license is that you're accepting a license from the largest psychopath that produces software.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I do front end web development for a place that uses java on the back end. The time between when I hit deploy to the time I can refresh and see new code in my browser is too long. Usually by the time it is ready I have gotten distracted and ended up on HN.

When I work on side projects that frustration is something I don't want to repeat. Java doesn't make the list of tools I consider. Maybe the other JVM languages have a better story in that regard. I just figured they reused Java's infrastructure and were equally handicapped.

</comment><comment><USER36> To be fair there are quite a lot of Scala based projects and startups.

</comment><comment><USER37> just tried to get my ruby project running on jruby. It's not a drop in replacement unfortunately, especially with database connectors. I think it makes sense if you're familiar with the Java ecosystem, but a lot of people aren't.

</comment><comment><USER38> 1\. Cause it's not trendy or cool.

2\. People are more familiar with other languages and their ecosystems (Javascript) ?

3\. For reasons (real or imaginary), they don't like Java or whichever JVM language you've listed.

</comment><comment><USER39> You can throw in Hivemind (www.crudzilla.com) as well...an open source polyglot web development platform for the JVM...It makes it very easy to use various JVM languages to build web apps.

</comment><comment><USER40> Hanging out at HN you could be excused for thinking that Java/C# don't exist. It's part of the charm.

[http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index....](http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html)

For every advantage you cite above there's a more interesting blog post to be written using a newer tech or non-JVM language. Or a far simpler blog post that doesn't require "step 1: install Eclipse and Kotlin."

But there are plenty of articles about JVM and .NET stuff.

<comment><USER41> Similarly you would think that PHP doesn't exist. Whatever one may think of it, PHP runs the majority of websites (I've seen various estimates in the 80% range).

<comment><USER42> There's a whole lotta CMS, Wiki, and storefront systems out there. And many of the big names there - WordPress, Drupal, MediaWiki, etc - all run on PHP.

We tend to live in a world of custom-coded dynamic websites, while many needs can be filled adequately by a static page or off-the-shelf package like the above. They're not sexy, but they work.

<comment><USER5> Many programming language can build those same sites using template DSLs ala haml. PHP is like a template DSL without the host language. While PHP is in many ways mature, why start from there now?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Maruku: a Markdown-superset interpreter - <AUTHOR> http://maruku.rubyforge.org/index.html

<comment><USER2> maruku has been around for a long time. The last gem release was in May 2009. What's the point of posting this ?</comment>


Ground uses AI to give users the ability to verify news events happening locally - <AUTHOR> https://ground.news/ <comment><USER2> This is a very cool idea – have been looking for something like this for a while to get out of the echo chambers that we tend to form in our social circles.</comment>


Qua: Alexia Massalin interview (1996) - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffmassalin/ <comment><USER2> If this interests you, you should give her phd thesis a read. Easily one of the craziest kernels out there; a 1980s optimizing JIT kernel that goes to crazy lengths even when viewed against today.

[http://valerieaurora.org/synthesis/SynthesisOS/index.html](http://valerieaurora.org/synthesis/SynthesisOS/index.html)

<comment><USER3> Here's a PDF version: [http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.29.4...](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.29.4871)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Oh my God, the end of the article is absolute _gold_! What a lovely tradition. I'm going to start offering piggyback rides to everyone I meet. Here's an excerpt of Alexia's experiences offering piggyback rides to various notable people:

> The Mighty Piggybacker

 _Marvin Minsky_ Lofty pioneer in artificial intelligence. "Great view! I could almost touch the bottoms of the traffic lights!"

__Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie __Creators of Unix. "I looked up to them as an undergrad at Cooper Union. Who would have imagined I'd actually get to meet them, let alone offer piggybacks! And afterward I got to fly with Ken in his plane!"

 _Zvi Galil_ Dean, School of Engineering, Columbia University. "Very fit. Jogs umpteen miles a day. Carries well."

__Penn & Teller __Comedians. "I carried Teller. But Penn (the big one) could not be persuaded that his weight was not an issue."

 _Calton Pu_ Massalin's PhD adviser. "Excellent piggybacks. Carried me 30 city blocks once! That's my longest piggyback ever from a single person."

__Neil Reynolds __Fellow grad student at Columbia. "At 6' 6", 350-plus pounds, the heaviest person I've carried. His rides are spectacular. He hardly notices it when I jump on."

__Renate Valencia __Massalin's girlfriend. "Much more than piggyback rides: also in-her-arms carries, over-her-shoulder carries, assorted spins and tosses. She can grab me by my armpits and twirl me round in the air!"

__Mort Meyerson __CEO, Perot Systems. "Not only accepted my offer, but did so with much enthusiasm. Restored my faith in humanity."

 _Richard Stallman_ Founder of the Free Software Foundation. "Impolite shrug; I did not even finish offering the piggyback when it became clear that further conversation would not have been appreciated."

__Douglas Adams __Author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. "Unceremoniously ignored an offer of a piggyback, as if I was crazy or something :-)"

__Nicholas Negroponte __Director of the MIT Media Lab. "Very politely declined several offers."

</comment><comment><USER5> Many years ago, I was in a group at Apple that interviewed Massalin. It was decided not to hire, as, while brilliant, there would be a net drop in productivity, as we would all spend too much time discussing the latest oddity. As one might expect, there was a stuffed koala toy on the table during Massalin's job talk. Brilliant work on the super-optimizer.

<comment><USER6> That seems like a really sad reason for no-hire.

It's hard not to think that the diversity of thought and personality would have been a net positive.

Though I suppose it all depends on the other team personalities as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> On John Regehr's blog there was some interesting musings about the Synthesis kernel ideas in 2019 [0], discussed on HN at the time here [1].

[0]: [https://blog.regehr.org/archives/1676](https://blog.regehr.org/archives/1676)

[1]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20337231](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20337231)

</comment><comment><USER7> > Then Massalin discovered that he could turn it around and use the > superoptimizer to discover and design better machine languages.

Any reference on this?

<comment><USER8> [https://courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/cse501/15sp/papers...](https://courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/cse501/15sp/papers/massalin.pdf)

<comment><USER7> Thanks, I'm not so sure that superoptimizers have been used to design ISA, it seems more like "what could I do with this tool?".

<comment><USER8> I suspect it was a misinterpretation on the part of the interviewer. If you make the (to a nontechnical writer) minor rephrasing of "design better machine languages" as "write better machine language" you get something better describing what the superoptimizer helps one do.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the interviewer interpreted Massalin's comment correctly.

She was (is?) involved in the design of the MicroUnity ISA.

You can find her name on quite a few of their patents.

She also posted to comp.compilers[0] about an improved version of the superoptimizer.

Their product was targeted at media codecs and signal processing so it would be natural to use a superoptimizer to identify whether an instruction was worth including in the ISA.

AFAIK MicroUnity never shipped a product but filed a lot of early patents on SIMD. They sued a number of tech companies for patent infringement so they may still exist.

[0] [https://compilers.iecc.com/comparch/article/97-07-088](https://compilers.iecc.com/comparch/article/97-07-088)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why I Dropped Out Of YC - <AUTHOR> http://wikichen.is/writing/why-i-dropped-out-of-yc/ <comment><USER2> Look, startups suck. Failed startups suck. Successful startups suck. Silicon Valley sucks. But so does working regular jobs, and so do a lot of things. The problem here is probably that you had the wrong expectations, and then when reality hit, it hit really hard.

If you want to play the game, you better be mentally prepared for dealing with a lot of shit. Egos are going to clash. Friendships are going to be strained. Stress is going to occur. To use one of my favorite quotes my dad always said to me, "that is life in the big city". Startups are not romantic -- they are a slog.

But... if you are building something you want to build, it can be worth it. Just don't expect it to be easy.

<comment><USER3> Startups don't suck! After having worked at plenty over the years I don't agree at all. I guess it depends how you respond to change and volatility. Some people find comfort in things staying the same, but I enjoy the high rate of change in startups. I enjoy the pace, sometimes it can be stressful but after a few you don't get too worried - investors come and go, products come and go, fortunes comes and go. It's not the destination that matters, if all you're focused on is the exit then you'll miss the fun. For me it's about staying current. After being a software dev for 25 years I still absolutely love the latest jquery widget, or that Factorie has just hit 1.0 and I can do Dependency Parsing in Scala, or that Pig can now talk to Spark, etc.. To enjoy startups you have to love technology. It's like dating, if all you're thinking about is getting the girl into bed it won't end well, if instead you enjoy the conversation and are genuinely having a good time then ... who knows.

<comment><USER4> > To enjoy startups you have to love technology.

In my experience, if you love technology and tinkering, you should absolutely _not_ work at a startup.

In the first years, a startup's main objective is results, results, results. Now is not the time to play with the latest node.js module, it's about picking the technology that will allow you to reach your goal the fastest, period. Compromise on that and another startup built on PHP will beat you to the punch.

If you love tinkering, join a big company. Spend a few months there to prove yourself to your colleagues and superiors and once you have that, you will have no problems carving out a comfortable 20% time that only you know about that you can use to tinker with the latest hotness.

Just don't do that at a startup, or be prepared to be the reason why the startup failed.

<comment><USER5> If you're right, clearly Larry/Sergei, elon musk, Steve Wozniak, etc have no place in start ups... I think you picked a controversial statement that's easy to poke holes in

<comment><USER4> Take a look at the technologies that were used to bootstrap all these startups:

\- Google: C++

\- Microsoft: assembly

\- Apple: assembly

\- eBay/PayPal: Java/C++

Like I said, there is simply no room in the early years of a start up to experiment with recent technology. I'd go further and claim that it's actually critical to use older, established technology to get your startup off the ground so you can focus on your idea without being hampered by technological glitches.

<comment><USER6> You seem to be conflating programming languages with technology.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If I have learned one thing from reading HN here it is:

If you want ownership (and by that I mean an equal say), you want to do a lifestyle business, not a startup. Once you start accepting other people's money, you get trapped into their expectations of an exit strategy.

That exit strategy ends in one of three ways:

1\. Your startup is sold and either you have a regular job or you no longer have any say. Either way you hopefully have some money.

2\. Your startup goes public, makes you very wealthy, and now you are beholden to the SEC, tax lawyers, accounting lawyers, etc.

3\. Your startup fails and ends.

That's it. You may have a great idea, with scalable revenue, etc. But if you want control you have to fund it yourself. That's one reason why I doubt Efficito will ever take investment money (my co-founder and I are on the same page there) from outside parties.

Where startups are better is where you want help to achieve greater rewards and don't mind being beholden to investors. That's the decision that has to be made before even looking at incubators.

<comment><USER8> Not to nitpick, but I don't think that you really mean to say "lifestyle business". When I think of a lifestyle business, I think of a smallish, relatively passive revenue generator.

I think that there might be roughly three types of companies: those financially backed through equity, small passive-ish businesses that allow the owner to go off and live their "lifestyle", and boot-strapped (equity intact) active corporations.

Personally, I want to retain all equity/control and would choose to dominate the market rather than milk the profit margin.

Anyway, maybe I've missed the mark. I'd love to further flesh this out.

<comment><USER9> Actually a lifestyle company is pretty much the term for any business that makes a great living for the owners and employees, but never results in significant profit for investors.

Investors won't touch a company with a 10 foot pole if they get a whiff of lifestyle corporation because they'll never get their investment back. But this doesn't make it a bad company, despite what you read around here on HN. In reality a lifestyle company can be just about the greatest, most satisfying and financially rewarding job that you can have. You just won't get any investor telling you that because there's nothing there for them.

<comment><USER7> > Investors won't touch a company with a 10 foot pole if they get a whiff of > lifestyle corporation because they'll never get their investment back.

It's not actually that they won't get their investment back. It's that they won't get it back in a form that really works for them. If I were to offer a VC an investment plan that would mean reliable payments of 30% of what they invested every year starting in five years and continuing forever, that would not be an attractive deal. Would they get their investment back many times over? Sure. But the thing is, it wouldn't happen all at once as a large payoff.

<comment><USER9> Yea good point. They would probably be more likely to get their money back actually, but it won't be a massive payout.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The author is a very good writer, but they don't actually say why they dropped out of YC. At best, they say "I'm glad I dropped out, because it wasn't much fun". (Yeah, they say that's the reason, but I believe that's a post- rationalisation).

Apparently, the company was stalling, and there were lots of disputes. It's a startup. I guess the author walked earlier than usual - that's either smart or dumb .... it's hard to know which without knowing more.

But there's not enough meat in the article to have a sane discussion on, other than making wild allegations about the author or YC or starups or Moleskin journals.

<comment><USER11> While it's mixed in amongst a bunch of other detail, several related reasons are given:

"…an irreconcilable working relationship rooted in fundamental differences in personalities and misaligned expectations of roles and responsibilities…"

"…the startup would never be something I could call my own, not just in stake but in equal say… …in this case the lack [of a sense of ownership] tore [the startup] apart…"

"…it just wasn't fun anymore…"

More specifics about the irreconcilable clashes over roles and sense of ownership would have been great, but there's enough to see that there were unpleasant disagreements between friends that got worse rather than better over time, and it made more sense for the author to leave than others. Happens all the time among people with strong opinions and unclear areas-of-mutual- deference...

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Did you leave the startup that got into YC or did the whole start up(your cofounder(s)) also leave YC? Your writing hints at the former in which case it sounds like you left a start up that got into YC, not as much YC.

<comment><USER13> He left his startup which continued on in YC without him.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > life's too short to wear hot pants.

Yes and now get back into your comfort zone.

Sorry, to be harsh but I just couldn't figure out why you left whom--YC, your startup, your cofounders? And what's all about this Moleskine? Happy about any clue or tl;dr

<comment><USER15> Perhaps this article was brilliant content marketing for Moleskine notebooks. That seemed to be the hero of the article, not the author.

<comment><USER16> Yep. Perhaps I should write a long article about my 1 dollar notebook I bought at a subway station. And the 1 dollar pen. It came without a plastic wrapping and serves me well!

People are brandwashed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> _But if you asked me for the one reason why it didn't work out, the truth is that it just wasn't fun anymore_

Is YC fun? Not the dinners. The work you're there to do.

It seems like doing a successful startup is closer to this than to fun: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7222850](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7222850)

 _Maybe in the wake of a failed startup I deluded myself into thinking great teams are predicated on great friendships, a truism that no longer holds absolute truth._

Perhaps there's a misunderstanding of what a friendship is in a business context. The cofounders have to have been friends for quite awhile, otherwise the stress will tear them apart. But they probably don't have to be dear friends, or the kind of friend you hug. It's just business.

 _to those like me who held the institution on a pedestal_

This seems the central issue. YC is ultimately about business. It's awesome, it's changed the world and my life, but having expectations that it's going to be fun and that you're there with dear friends seems off the mark. But I've never done YC, so this is just speculation on my part.

<comment><USER18> > it's changed the world and my life ... but I've never done YC, so this is > just speculation on my part.

If you haven't done YC, how has it changed your life?

<comment><USER17> Airbnb provides a lot of help for people without a lot of money. I would've been in a bad position if not for Airbnb.

Dropbox has made my life a lot less stressful.

HN gives us all so many opportunities. For example, the monthly "who is hiring?" threads. If anyone is suddenly stricken with a run of bad luck, then they can make a post about it and the community will come together to at least offer them work. People here like talent, and can find ways to use it. Most other places aren't like that. And imagine a world with only Reddit.

Also, imagine a world with no HN and no Reddit.

YC has made seed funding more accessible, and given founders more power. The VC's had the upper hand before YC. Now the VCs seem to be closer to servants than masters. If I decide to do a startup, that will impact me.

Probably some other things I haven't thought of off hand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Sorry to say this but it sounds like you're not a right fit for startups. Startups aren't for everyone. If you want to be a founder it is absolutely a gut wrenching challenge. You have to put yourself out there and then be torn apart a million different ways. You have to adapt and change, listen to others. Be relentless. Work is a grind, you don't get to work on what's fun. You have to work on what's right. And if you can't get a very deep sense of fulfillment with all that sacrifice, it doesn't mean you're a bad person. It just means you should get a normal job, or be employee 100 at a company, just don't be a founder.

<comment><USER20> I'm curious about what you think is a way to actually get to work on what's fun. I know fun is a personal definition, but as I'm starting to build a product myself and I do find it fun and I'm doing it because I like it being fun, I hear this warnings and it kind of makes me think.

Of course I'm afraid I will fail, but I also don't think working at an office is fun, unless you get to work on a cool project and there's no politics (yeah right..) or something like that. But then if building a product yourself, on your own terms, with your own hands, etc, is not fun, then what is? And I don'mean to be rhetorical or sarcastic. I'm asking seriously.

With a lot of comments along the same lines as how hard it is because in the end it's business, what does it mean to build a product for fun, but where the business part is either not the most important part, or even present at all?

Would that be like building a product and giving it away, so it's actually only for fun?

<comment><USER19> I would think the most fun thing to do would be to join a startup that's doing something that gets you excited, that already has an awesome team, that's already validated the product and the market. At that point it's still a lot of work but at least you know what you're getting into, there's less banging your head against the wall, and you're just helping to make the rocket ship go.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I dropped out of YC in '08\. It's really OK, I am not out on the street with glazed-over eyes wondering what could've been.

<comment><USER22> YC wasn't such a huge deal in '08 though, were they?

<comment><USER21> I guess I don't know what you mean. They were certainly out of the "we don't know if this experiment is going to work or not" stage, and it was clear that the experiment was working. The number of startups that were being funded was less, but the number of startups in general was less too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm still confused what happened: did you have a cofounder dispute? Aaron is probably the most chill partner at YC, so you got good advice I'm sure.

<comment><USER24> I read it twice, but I still didn't catch a motive beyond "it wasn't fun." I'm thinking he couldn't stomach the process of building a company: the day in, day out of keeping a fledgling venture alive.

On the bright side, he may have saved his former company's life by parting ways with it when he did. Early stage ventures past the incubator/accelerator stage don't seem to weather cofounder disputes without taking significant damage.

<comment><USER7> The motive that came through to me was a sense of a loss of voice, i.e. he didn't feel like he had an equal say now that they had accepted money from investors. I.e. unrealistic expectations.

<comment><USER23> I don't really understand that. Investors gave you money because they believed in the vision you conveyed (or whatever); aside from some very minimal minority-shareholder protections, and protecting your reputation, investors in early stage companies have very little power over you.

The strongest pressure is probably from cofounders, or from employees/customers (once you have those; you can also fire either), or from yourself.

<comment><USER7> > Investors gave you money because they believed in the vision you conveyed > (or whatever);

But it isn't just that. They are locked into an exit strategy and they have to protect that interest. This is even true of the investors with the most honesty and integrity.

In other words, one would hope that an investor would not micromanage, but the investor is ultimately in it to make money and has a few small acceptable options to do that, so they are going to protect that interest. Money == power.

<comment><USER23> Seed stage investors have essentially no power. They have convertible notes (i.e. are debtholders) -- this gives them about as much power over you as your credit card company, as long as you stay current on the payments (which are usually deferred in the contract); YC is common-holder (and has 2-10%).

You can literally ignore the investors for at least the duration of the note (and probably longer) with no real repercussions. If you _sell_ the company, they'll be able to get in line for money (and generally get paid first), but until Series A, investors have essentially no control to do anything.

In practice, being a dick to your investors (intentionally or unintentionally) is a bad idea (sorry! was busy!), as they usually will help you a lot more if they know _how_ they can help you, but otherwise, it's pretty much at the bottom of concerns.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I feel a certain amount of empathy for the author, mostly due to having been adrift through some lengthy segments of my own life. I will only say that spending much time navel-gazing is a largely futile exercise, particularly when the fruits of that labor are so decidely ambiguous and unfocused. Put some distance, in the metaphysical sense, between yourself and these events.

</comment><comment><USER26> The thing about YC, is that it is the 'Steve Jobs way', the way of brilliant showmanship. But also the way of blatant lies and distortions fields. It is not the 'Wozniak Way'.

(I'm also a YC dropout.)

<comment><USER27> The "Wozniak Way" was to do something very smart and ahead of its time, and let someone else do the marketing that was crucial to its success. The "Wozniak Way" may power some great open source projects, but successful great startups.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm curious how the OP found his startup partner(s) and what the irreconcilable differences were.

<comment><USER29> Seriously. The title is 'why' and there is no explicit explanation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I left this (very small point) on Jonathan's blog but think it worth noting here too:

 _Taking the new Moleskine from the shelf and removing it from its plastic wrap, I turned to the first blank page and picked up my pen._

Good luck on the next steps. One small suggestion, however: consider a Rhodia Webnotebook next time (I wrote about it here: [http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2013/01/05/product-review- rhod...](http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2013/01/05/product-review-rhodia- webbie-webnotebook)). It's more durable than Moleskines and the paper is consistently better. I use a pocket-size notebook but there are A4 versions too.

</comment><comment><USER31> I sometimes wonder if people like this wake up one day and realize they tossed one of the most important opportunities of their lives because they are stubborn. Probably not.

</comment><comment><USER32> Irrelevant to the article, every business dreams of the brand loyalty that Moleskine enjoys. Look how often the article uses the brand name for a largely commodity product.

</comment><comment><USER33> I just want to say you're not alone in being jaded and disillusioned about "Silicon Valley at large". There are a lot of things about it that are fucked up and you should absolutely blaze your own trail or look elsewhere if it doesn't sit right with you. There are a lot of people in tech who deliberately steer clear and they're not hanging out on HN either. For some reason I'm still stuck on this site though.

</comment><comment><USER34> I wish the author would have talked specifically about the clash with his partner(s), that would have been actually insightful/interesting. But maybe privacy concerns prevent that which is understandable.

I've actually been in a similar position with an incubator startup-thing where my cofounders couldn't carry on working on what we (perhaps mostly I) initially set out to do. Working on anything else certainly feels like hot pants to me. But alas, I'm taking the other route and seeing what happens when I swallow my pride and decide to try learning about something that I think is otherwise bullshit. Just this one time though... can't let the rest of the world tell you to work on shit you don't want to work on forever ;)

Anyone else relate to this for an incubator-type thing? How did staying a path you didn't initially like vs. quitting work out for y'all?

</comment><comment><USER35> I'm not sure this says why you dropped out. Is your primary reason because it wasn't 'fun'? I'm not sure startups are supposed to be 'fun'. They are incredibly hard ventures to solve problems where others have failed.

<comment><USER36> If you are literally having zero fun doing something for a sustained period of time you should probably stop doing that. Startups are hard work but there should be small victories along the way that should be fun. There should be fun in the experience of creating something. There should be fun in sharing what you've built with people. If you're not getting any of that and the environment is completely toxic something is probably wrong.

<comment><USER37> I would replace "fun" with "rewarding" in your comment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I just came to say I love this style of writing. Easy to read and funny. Good job.

<comment><USER39> Agreed. I've started following his blog for this reason. An excellent voice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> It seems like he was into YC to write about how he dropped.

He could enjoy the ride just for fun.

</comment><comment><USER41> Was that a commercial for moleskin?</comment>


We Are Gonna Need It - <AUTHOR> http://www.petrikainulainen.net/software-development/design/we-are-gonna-need-it/ <comment><USER2> Isn't it kind of ironic that AGILE is created to help fix issues along the road, but then AGILE itself is treated like it's written in stone.

I like the idea of rewriting or improving the rule-book as well, something that should be applied more often to other things, for example religion.</comment>


Hey, blogger The consumer protection police would like a word with you - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/id/2231808/# <comment><USER2> This is just another example of the disturbing trend of increasing body of "crimes of omission". These are crimes that involve what might be considered ordinary daily activities that now require permission seeking or special compliance efforts in order to prevent them from being criminal activities. Some of these regulations are clearly reasonable, but they seem to be getting less so of late, and the penalties for non-compliance (even through reasonable ignorance) much harsher.

"Ignorance of the law" may be no excuse but it will not be reasonable for much longer to expect ordinary citizens to be able to comply.

<comment><USER3> Ignorance of the law was no excuse when the laws were roughly the ten commandments, or my personal golden rule, passed down to my sons: Don't be a douchebag.

Now, even professional lawyers can't keep up with what is/isn't may be/may not be illegal. It's insane.

It's like I mentioned in a previous thread -- if we write laws such that everyone is a criminal, then obviously we won't be able to enforce them on everyone... then it becomes a matter of staying in the good graces of the enforcers.</comment></comment>


Technicolor Dissects IPhones In Hunt For Patent Payoff - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-28/technicolor-dissects-iphones-in-hunt-for-patent-payoff.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not sure how to think about a business model which relies on this conversation:

A: "You are copying our technology" B: "We've never heard of your technology" A: "It's right here in your product, you just didn't know you were copying it"</comment>


Hallway Testing: Get Free Usability Feedback - <AUTHOR> http://www.hallwaytesting.com/2008/03/14/hallway-testing-short-usability-reviews/ I started this blog to present short web site reviews I do every once in awhile. Hacker News people especially are welcome to contact me to have their site reviewed - contact info is on the site. <comment><AUTHOR> I started this blog to present short web site reviews I do every once in awhile. Hacker News people especially are welcome to contact me to have their site reviewed - contact info is on the site.</comment>